Michele Medda is a well known Italian comics writer. He is the co-creator of Nathan Never, the popular sci-fi hero published by Bonelli Comics. For more info about him and his work at www.peterpress.com (his new independent company) and http://web.tiscalinet.it/michelemedda (his homepage).

Why do I like Alan Moore? "I like his way of writing" sounds trite. Perhaps it’s better to say that I like his way of thinking.

I was struck by what he once said: "My purpose is to create with joy".

We should print it in block capitals on the walls behind our desks. "Creating with joy" is something that you seldom bear in mind: you rather tend to worry about deadlines and about how better a script would have been if you had spent some more time on it. You also think about the things that you could do and that nobody is willing to finance such as a good color book satisfactorily printed.

Finally you live your job in a penitential way, trying to think that "it’s just a job", that "in substance what really matters is that you draw your pay". In this position creating is difficult enough and creating "with joy" becomes impossible. Honestly, I don’t know if Alan Moore always creates "with joy". Maybe himself doesn’t know. Anyway, if fiction’s aim is to convey emotions … well, when I read Moore’s works I feel lots of emotions.

As an exacting and voracious reader I add that not all Moore’s stuff is to my liking. His novel "Voice of the fire" made me doze off after three chapters, "The killing joke" is full of incongruities and I think that "The League of EG" and "ABC" are faultless but sterile virtuous exercises.

Anyway, at his best ("Watchmen", "From Hell", "Swamp Thing" and also the undervalued "A Small Killing") Moore is really great.

I think his greatness consists - rather than in his well-known excellent technique - in the basis thought of his works and in his will to re-invent himself over again, supplanting or revising the comics’ rules, or even working rigorously inside them.

It is a typical English and American idea of art, the idea which named the dramatic works with a word - "play" – setting itself in opposition to the traditional Catholic-Communist dismal gravity which still corrupts the Italian culture (comics included, authors and readers).

The rest – the legend around the Bard of Northampton’s work, his never-ending descriptions of the illustrations, his narrative and graphic symmetries – doesn’t strike me particularly.

That’s technique, and technique – although excellent – can be learned.

You can’t learn the ideas instead. That’s another thing and that’s what makes a difference.